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Savoia Marchetti S.27 Sparviero – Part One – The Museum Repaint

The Savoia Marchetti museum in Italy has one of these aircraft on display. It has been repainted from the WW2 Italian version to a Lebanese Air Force scheme from the late 40’s. There are good colour photos of the plane in war service with Lebanon – it is a prime candidate for a special paint…
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Good Build – Bad Build

Or no build at all… We see a number of memes pop through our social media feed that have descriptions of ” lawful evil ” or ” neutral chaotic ” or some such applied to life. It can be on subjects as minor as how you store your bread. Well, why not apply it to…
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Sitting Out The Setting…

This is the most critical time for a modeller. The point where they display either admirable character and sensible judgement…or a complete lack of either quality. I do not invite judgement but I have bought my bus ticket out of town just in case. The coat of paint is touch-dry. Yet I know it is…
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Dewoitine D.520 – Part Three – C’est Fini

And fini’d very well, I might add. The usual number of minor errors and hidden mistakes, but then that is par for the course. The D.520 paint job is not perfect – I was trying the freehand spray technique with the pressure on the airbrush turned down to 8 psi and a very thin mixture.…
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Dewoitine D.520 – Part Two – C’est l’Avalanche

One cannot do a Hobby Boss kit slowly – the very nature of the simple moulding does not lend itself to the dawdler. You either do it in normal speed and accept that you will progress rapidly or lapse into ennui. That is my philosophical explanation for the Dewoitine on a stick that you see…
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Dewoitine D.520 – Part One – Allo, Allo…

I have passed the Hobby Boss Dewoitine D-520 kit on the hobby shop shelves for a couple of years now with no regrets. I’d built a Morane Saulnier and a Caudron and the prospect of an diminutive French plane was no urgent call. But I’ve recently borrowed one of those profile books of WW2 fighters…
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Somewhere There Is The Land Of Giants

Little worlds abound on our planet. From my own RCAF WET DOG and Wet Dog Regional Airport or countless model villages in the UK, to Madurodam, or the giant German public rail layout or the equally large private US and Canadian layouts…there are slices of tiny life everywhere. I am prepared to award the title…
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Scale Model Philosophy 101

I once completed a very nice build of a very bad kit. It was not the worst one I had attempted, nor the best job I’d ever done, but it did bring into focus what has become my guiding principles. I hasten to add that these are not virtues or glories…just realisations about the hobby.…
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Mitsubishi Dinah – Part Three – Standing Room Only…

The Mitsubishi Type 100 – the Dinah – was delivered to the Japanese Army Air Force in several versions – bomber, reconnaissance plane, trainer, etc. and there were several configurations of nose and canopy. The thin nose and multi-step greenhouse is characteristic of the training aircraft – probably to allow and instructor to oversee the…
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Mitsubishi Dinah – Part Two – The Bright Bird

I knew at the outset that the Dinah in IJAF trainer colours was rather special. The yellow is not the pure chrome of the RAF or RCAF trainers nor the red/yellow of a prewar US Navy aircraft wing – it has a distinct orange glow to it. I wasn’t sure whether the plastic that the…
